This stinks of my cynicism, but I hope Tesla doesn't mind competing with unbranded, unlicensed Chinese copies of Tesla-designed vehicles.
Based on their blanket grant of royalty-free patent licenses, I wouldn't think so, but that might just be the sort of idealism you see when a competitor doesn't have you up against the ropes, pummeling the snot out of you. It's one thing to go read the patents and maybe add the parts you understand to your product. It's another thing entirely to be able to observe an entire functioning assembly line and copy it down to the millimeter.
And that is something that will happen to any factory Tesla sets up on mainland China. Then they start chopping off the more expensive bits. Tesla must be betting that the x% of the Chinese market that cares about brand and can also afford to pay for genuine goods would buy a real Tesla instead of a nigh-identical knockoff, at rates high enough to be significant against the 25% tariff. That kind of financial math is beyond my expertise, though.
Based on their blanket grant of royalty-free patent licenses, I wouldn't think so, but that might just be the sort of idealism you see when a competitor doesn't have you up against the ropes, pummeling the snot out of you. It's one thing to go read the patents and maybe add the parts you understand to your product. It's another thing entirely to be able to observe an entire functioning assembly line and copy it down to the millimeter.
And that is something that will happen to any factory Tesla sets up on mainland China. Then they start chopping off the more expensive bits. Tesla must be betting that the x% of the Chinese market that cares about brand and can also afford to pay for genuine goods would buy a real Tesla instead of a nigh-identical knockoff, at rates high enough to be significant against the 25% tariff. That kind of financial math is beyond my expertise, though.